The Slow Road to Fascism

October 14, 2015

Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people — the following preparations would be essential:

1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed, or machine-gunned with a minimum of expense and waste.

2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment.

3. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations.

4. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals.

5. Continue military conscription. Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheerful obedience to officially constituted authority.

6. Divert attention away from deep conflicts within society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test of loyalty, thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order.

7. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns.

8. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts and improve the national parks into national parking lots.

The preceding words appeared in Edward Abbey’s classic 1968 tome, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. Some 46 years later, I would change a few phrases to enhance their political correctness, although I doubt Abbey would do the same. In general, however, it’s difficult for me to disagree with the sentiments expressed by Cactus Ed in his break-out book.

Abbey referred to “a dictatorial regime.” It’s a minor quibble, but I’d call if fascism. Below, I include an essay I penned and posted in this space in May 2012. It was titled, “When All is Said and Done.”

Fascism has come to the industrialized world, and the evidence is particularly clear in the United States. As I wrote in a book published in 2004 regarding the executive branch of the U.S. government:

[The administration] is characterized by powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism, identification of enemies as a unifying cause, obsession with militaristic national security and military supremacy, interlinking of religion and the ruling elite, obsession with crime and punishment, disdain for the importance of human rights and intellectuals who support them, cronyism, corruption, sexism, protection of corporate power, suppression of labor, control over mass media, and fraudulent elections. These are the defining elements of fascism.

The situation has progressed, and not in a suitable manner from the perspective of the typical self-proclaimed progressive. Along with fascism, we’re firmly ensconced in a totalitarian, surveillance-obsessedpolice state. We’ve been in this state for many years and the situation grows worse every year, but most people prefer to look away and then claim ignorance while politicians claim we’re not the people indicated by our actions. As long as you’re not in jail (yet) or declared a terrorist (yet) and subsequently killed outright (yet), you’re unlikely to bring attention to yourself, regardless what you know and feel about the morality of the people running ruining the show.

But why? Is fear such a great motivator that we allow complete destruction of the living planet to give ourselves a few more years to enable and further the destruction? Is the grip of culture so strong we cannot break free in defense of planetary habitat for our children? Have we moved so far away from the notion of resistance that we can’t organize a potluck dinner without seeking permission from the Department of Homeland Security?

I know many parents who claim they can’t take action because they want a better world for their children. Their version of a “better world” is my version of a worse world, as they long for growth of the industrial economy at the expense of clean air, clean water, healthy food, the living planet, runaway greenhouse, and human-population overshoot. I’ve come to call this response “the parent trap.” Trapped by the culture of make believe, these parents cannot bring themselves to imagine a different world. A better world. A world without the boot of the police state on the necks of their children. A world with more carnivores every year, instead of fewer. A world with less pollution, less garbage, and less lying — to ourselves and others — each and every year.

All evidence indicates we prefer Fukushima forever, if it means we can have electric toys. We prefer near-term extinction by climate chaos, if it means we can cool the house to 68 F in the summer. We prefer genocide, if it comes with a milkshake and an order of fries. Henry Ford was wrong when he pointed out, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” On the other hand, General Omar Bradley’s sentiments from 1948 ring true: “The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.”

Even though we’re willingly tapping six scary extreme energy sources to fuel the post-peak oil industrial economy, power outages have become exponential within the last decade, as indicated in the figure below. We clearly don’t care about the environmental consequences of our greed, so we keep soldiering on, wishing for a miracle and ignoring the evidence for imperial decline, human-population overshoot, runaway climate change, and a profound extinction crisis. Will the final power outage come in time to save us from our unrepentant selves?

Ultimately and sadly, I suspect it comes down to this: When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. We simply can’t be bothered to contemplate a single issue of importance when the television calls or the shopping mall beckons. Political “activists” spend hours every day elaborating the many insignificant differences between the two dominant political parties in this country, but they cannot bring themselves to throw a wrench into the gears of industry. They continue to ignore the prescient words of Desmond Tutu long after the consequences of inaction are obvious: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

The only reason I can imagine wanting to retain this horrific system for a few more years is to safely shut down the nuclear reactors that are poised to kill us. But increasing the number of these uber-expensive sources of electricity, as President Obama desires, means shoving more ammunition into the Gatling gun pointed at our heads. One bullet does the trick. In classic American style, we prefer more. Always more.

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Comments 100

Just a quick reply to someone who mentioned before about keeping pets indoors which is cruel. I once lived with a woman (moron) who kept a bird in a cage if that wasn’t bad enough but they also had a turtle in a tank which was so tiny the poor thing couldn’t even turn round. The ignorant ass even stuck a giant rock in there as well so it spent it’s life wedged on a rock. How fucking insane. I was a guest in the house so all I could do was let them both out for some exercise, with hindsight I should have killed them. What is the matter with these fucking humans? They must have mental issues, seriously, and badly be crippled by them as well.

Speaking of roads, an old piece of folk wisdom has it that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. In this case, even the intentions are suspect. History shows us that waiting for the masses to wake up is an exercise requiring infinite patience. If the general population had their way at the time, the current USA would still be under British rule. Some say it is.

I am waiting for the grid to go down and the food to stop reaching this community and the freezing cold stopping the fools in their tracks under high levels of ionizing radiation. I carry a rope, and pills, just in case.

Last el nino (baby jezus) was terrible here. Weeks on end without electricity because of ice storm. Life in shelters, no communications. 20 years later, all the trees are soooo weak, they would just massively come down, for ever.

The question is, will the global economy collapse quickly enough to prevent holocausts perpetrated towards those who are scapegoated by the right-wingers (who are funded by the elites)?

“Those singled out as internal enemies will include people of color, immigrants, gays, intellectuals, activists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, journalists, union leaders and those defined as “liberals.” They will be condemned by reactionary forces, fed and sustained by corporate propaganda and money, and blamed for our decline.” – Hedges

What do you humans think? Do you think we will see holocausts in America before the house of cards falls over completely, and permanently?

Guy, Although I unhesitatingly used term, fascism, for most of my adult life; I stopped using it ten years ago when I realized that just using the term FRAMES all the preposterously false but still very powerful anti-German imagery put into our brains by 85 years of carefully engineered top down Zionist/Israeli propaganda & distortions about Adolph Hitler’s cultural revitalization of a despairing Germanic culture & German National Socialism.

This anomaly data set is calculated using Nick’s gridding method, and has shown itself over time to be very close to GISS.

At the moment the October anomaly is over 0.3 degrees higher than September! It looks as if we are entering El Nino spike territory now, similar to what happened in early 1998 and 2007, with all time monthly anomalies in the offing.

The new human freedom made striving for expansion and power possible. Such freedom, when multiplied, creates anarchy. The anarchy among civilized societies meant that the play of power in the system was uncontrollable. In an anarchic situation like that, no one can choose that the struggle for power shall cease. But there is one more element in the picture: no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes.

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.

I have just outlined four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes: destruction, absorption and transformation, withdrawal, and imitation. In every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes.

This parable is a theory of social evolution which shows that power is like a contaminant, a disease, which once introduced will gradually yet inexorably become universal in the system of competing societies. More important than the inevitability of the struggle for power is the profound social evolutionary consequence of that struggle once it begins. A selection for power among civilized societies is inevitable. If anarchy assured that power among civilized societies could not be governed, the selection for power signified that increasingly the ways of power would govern the destiny of mankind. This is the new evolutionary principle that came into the world with civilization. Here is the social evolutionary black hole that we have sought as an explanation of the harmful warp in the course of civilization’s development. (end extract)

“I recognised several years ago that the vast majority of people, whether in positions of power or not, are scientifically and financially illiterate. The further up the pyramid one examines, the higher the chance of encountering a psychotic sociopath and compulsive liar.”

So, knowing this, why not game the system to your advantage? I mean, you’re entirely correct, and being so essentially means you can actually foretell the future. Do you know what a rare talent that is? However, one of the key issues I have with NBL, is that while almost everyone is correct in their observations (except Webster who still thinks primitive man had parties when opposing tribes met at boundaries), why has no one seemingly taken advantage of this knowledge? Instead, there’s is this constant litany of complaints, antipathy & disdain about the situation at hand.

I could describe my life arc similarly to many posters, except for the crucial junction where others rejected societal norms. Rather, I took a counter position and embraced an image that was establishment to the core. Operating as a living, breathing Trojan horse in the belly of the beast has provided me with sufficient financial freedom to fund high levels of independence, health and clean living.

I’ve mentioned this before, but what if Guy had merely waited 5 or so years before making his life changing decision? What if he had allowed his state of mind to reach the point it has now where he understands fully the inevitability of humanity’s course? He could be pulling in a nice salary & benefits, going through the motions of teaching (maybe cluing in a few bright prospects), but otherwise having a good time watching the show unfold as predicted.

When one considers that kind of alternative approach, does it then suggest there might be many, many others who are operating in similar fashion? How many were smart/wise enough to not throw themselves upon the stakes in a folly of ego, but rather clearly assessed the situation, realized it was a mug’s game, and decided to play it better than the dopes, liars & charlatans who really, truly embraced the idea that they were engaged in some kind of virtuous civic duty by being good, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens?

To those that inculcated an image of rebellion, you reap what you sow.

Here’s a little slice of small-town fascism from my morning today. I’ve mentioned I’m part of a local group opposing a 1,000,000 s.f. development at the highway exit that leads to our town. The development would physically be as large as the existing town itself, and would kill off most remaining commerce there.

Anywhoo, there is a public land-use review process called Act 250, which in theory holds out various protections for ag. land and other, even intangible, values that might be compromised by large areas of construction. What they call a “quasi-judicial” process consists of a series of public hearings where evidence may be presented (only by approved parties and by “friends of the commission” of which our group is one). Three appointed commissioners act as judge and jury as to whether the applicant has met the requirements set forth in the 10 criteria of the Act.

So, to make a long story short, I’m pinning up a notice for the next PUBLIC hearing on the PUBLIC bulletin board in the PUBLIC library, offered to the PUBLIC to post PUBLIC event information, and a librarian I sort of know, decent lady, understands about thinking “green”, seemed interested in the flyer, but in a kind of “hmmm” way. She said that “you folks have put up some inflammatory stuff” and that I should check with the head librarian to see if it was ok to post.

I said “we?” “inflammatory”? and she said “yes, some of the things [Exit4 colleague] puts up have been inflammatory”. I said, “Well, it’s a notice of a public hearing; if people want to show up on either side, they can.” She looked both sides over and put her finger on the part that said “sign the petition at Change.org” and said, “see, that’s…” (like I was supposed to see what was controversial there). We ended by agreeing that I’d just put up the front side, which was mainly about the hearing. I said that if [head librarian] felt she needed to take it down well then I guess that’s what she needed to do; meanwhile, I was going to do what I needed to do.

I’m fairly gob-smacked since it IS a PUBLIC library. Do they censor potentially “inflammatory” books?

I really got nothin’ here! Was just not prepared for that exchange!

I think people are internalizing the general creeping fascism.

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Now, my deterministic side tells me that this lady, apart from her library context, is not really intellectually opposed to my flyer. But she’s getting stronger conflicting messages from more proximate status-quo folks who are feeling threatened by those who would unveil the growth/prosperity meme as false. Our group is creating a disturbance in the Force.

Librarian is unconsciously “choosing” sides in a resource struggle. But then, our side sees ag. land as potential resource and they see buildings as potential resources. We’re not actually operating too differently from one another except in our base assumptions.

It’s been noted that if voting changed anything, we wouldn’t be allowed to do it. Similarly, if free public libraries could actually change people’s behavior, they wouldn’t be allowed either. What we like is the ILLUSION that our ideas matter.

The kicker is that 97% of Act 250 applications get approved, yet even I can slip into thinking “ooo, I’ll get the word out, and that will change something”. I’ve found this little contrarian “tribe” I can identify with, and I will make flyers for them and they will like me.

Anyway, every day that we “choose” not directly commit suicide is a “choice” to participate in the present system and that’s something that is difficult to face, when it comes down to it, for those who see what is going on.

@B9, after 9/11 my mind leaped right away to thoughts of buying stock in Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, etc. But I didn’t (I think) because I was still operating with the social underpinnings of someone evolved to live in a small tribe. I didn’t want to “be like” the hated sociopaths Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld. I was already financially comfortable enough. Maybe if I had been younger and poorer, who knows? The thought did cross my mind, anyway.

I think what you are asking is “why doesn’t everyone take the path of maximum predation” as a strategy rather than “average” predation and I think that is a behavior that is on one side of the bell curve in terms of social adaptation. Obviously whatever you have done has worked out in a way you’re happy with. Same here.

I must admit that I am one of the people still chugging along within the system, still using the water from my municipal taps, still turning on the A/C when it’s too hot, still relying on the flip of a switch to light the room. Certainly a big reason for this is simple fear. I have no idea how to abandon it all and still survive. And frankly, I’m not ready to go yet. I don’t own land. I don’t have the money to purchase any land. I don’t have survival skills for the wilderness. I could leave the city and go somewhere and do something else, but go where? And do what? Yes, I still rely on our stupid American “health care system” run by the billion dollar health insurance companies. I rely on the food being at the stores, gasoline to get me around. The only difference between me and everyone around me is that I won’t be surprised when it all comes crashing down. I won’t be crying because I had a 401K disappear overnight and the world is descending into chaos (well, I might be crying about the latter). Perhaps that makes me slightly more prepared, but I doubt it. As far as fighting it, rising up and smashing the system, I just don’t see the point in that. Sure, you end up with a cleaner conscience (maybe?) but it won’t change the inevitable. Am I being a defeatist? Yes. But I’ve already accepted, at least in my mind, the end of it all. I’m not really sitting around waiting for it to happen, but I’m not doing anything to stop it, either. Largely because I know we can’t. Just going along until I can’t go along no more.

“They cannot bring themselves to imagine a different world. A better world. A world without the boot of the police state on the necks of their children. A world with more carnivores every year, instead of fewer. A world with less pollution, less garbage, and less lying — to ourselves and others — each and every year.”

People who pitch this kind of hopium are no different than televangelists. Never, ever in the entire history of mankind have the masses of lower IQ serfs been able to organize & overcome the superior cunning of the psychopaths in charge.

I don’t care what anecdotal cause one may reference – the French revolution seems to be a fairly popular example of a supposed mass uprising. If one actually takes the time to study the history of regime changes, it is always, always one power center vs another, regardless of its superficial image or post event mythology.

The masses are masses for a very good reason: they neither possess the physical ability, intelligence, social skills or discipline to be included among the leaders. It’s a term not commonly seen much these days, but “good breeding” is, was, and will continue to be the key selection criteria for inclusion in the club.

Proselytizing to the masses that they have the numbers to effect some kind of mythical social change or equitable allocation of resources is just another con. In reality, it’s no different than a whole gamut of other plays which prey on people’s emotions, including religion, morality, democracy and other invented terms & concepts imagined by ‘losers’.

Again: we are yeast. There is no reason to be alive (just another definition for a temporary arrangement of atoms) other than to compete over scarce resources, consume, procreate & die. Once you fully – and I mean FULLY – understand that essential truth, then this Zen state will enable you to finally be able to flow smoothly among your fellow travelers, most of whom are consumed by ego, desires & beliefs that handicap them, but allows you to maximize whatever you may feel like pursuing.

Your Act 250 thingy reminds me of a question I got wrong on a business course final that I took while getting my comp sci degree. I disputed the correct answer vehemently with the prof. because it just seemed so stupid to me, but to no avail.

The Q. was along the lines of:

If your business was going to exploit a town and leave it damaged when you left, to the point where people would show up with pitchforks and shotguns when you rolled into town with your machinery to get started, then how would you go about getting away with your plans without having people show up and stop you? How do you get them to let you execute your plan without opposition?

The answer was: Hold a survey first.

The prof. couldn’t (wouldn’t?) adequately explain how this answer made any sense; it was just a question he pulled from the textbook that we used for the course. However, years later I understood how this works when I experienced the futility of opposing a large development project in a community where I lived. In my country, they call this survey “the consultation process.”

“The consultation process” is the portion of the project or development where public outcry and opposition is expected, and fully prepared for. The community hall holds a public meeting with the developer and a group of disorganized citizens tries to cobble together some form of cohesive opposition to the project. The developer and the city play along with the most earnest of phony smiles and platitudes, saying they want to work with the community and to make everyone happy.

Eventually it all ends up with the developer and city dividing and conquering the locals by capitalizing on tactics such as dragging things out over time, pitting their organized team of paid professionals up against the rag tag and un-funded group of citizens, promising little concessions to locals who aren’t really directly affected by the development anyway (which starts little dissentions and grudges amongst the citizens, which wears them down.) There’s really a whole bunch of games they can play, all with the full knowledge that eventually they will be rolling in and doing whatever they please anyway, without any real concessions at all. They really never intend to compromise, although they talk like they are willing to at the start of the process. They might even present a ten story project, and then knock it down to only six stories, when they really only planned to build six stories in the first place. But, that then becomes their great compromise to the community, and they just got their wish. It’s all just smoke and mirrors really, and the developers will have expected and planned for this process … the consultation process is actually their own business invention, just like my textbook implied. lol!

In the end, the disorganized (or even relatively organized, it doesn’t really matter) citizenry tires of the neighborhood fighting with each other over the project details. Joe doesn’t think it’s so bad, and Sally still hates it because it’s right beside her house. It’s the ‘divide and conquer’ tactic, plus people just plain wear out eventually over time. The whole neighborhood eventually has enough time to get used to the idea, and just gives up their opposition to it almost completely. Usually this happens around the time when the city reminds the community that the developer has compromised by allowing them to choose the roof and trim color, and so now maybe it’s high time they compromised a little back, ‘dontcha think folks?’ Like, by letting the project go ahead? You do get to choose the trim color now, after all. The developer is compromising here too (ya sure, like the builder even cares what color the fucking trim is!)

See, it’s called a survey. If you want to wreck someone’s town and you know they’ll all show up with pitchforks to stop you, just hold a survey. Eventually, after the survey, they’ll all be fighting so much with each other over what you’re doing that you can just roll in right with your earthmovers and get to steppin’. They’re not mad at you anymore; they’re all mad at each other now over what Joe said to Sally when they got in that fight at the last consultation meeting!

That’s exactly what our local and national ‘democratic’ elections are too, just surveys … meant to calm the people by giving them the illusion that they actually had a choice, when really they never did. Elections and all ‘consultation processes’ are really just tools designed to affect psychology on people. But, we all knew that here, right?

There you go. Business 101 … hold a survey. So simple. How did I not know that? It was the only question I ever got wrong on any final I ever took over my whole four year degree. Now I know … hold a survey. I couldn’t believe they would even teach evil shit like that in a course, or have the balls to actually print it right there in the textbook plain as day. However, this is ‘merica, and everyone loves a good business story, don’t they? Mind you, they just said … ‘hold a survey’ in the text, they never actually did explain it. You have to experience it to understand it.

So, let’s have a survey shall we? Who thinks we should kill the planet?

Of course, I’m being facetious with my survey question, in case anybody needs to be told that. Of course we shouldn’t kill the planet. Oh, but we will. They’re holding many surveys on this right now as we speak.

B9K9 said: “People who pitch this kind of hopium are no different than televangelists. Never, ever in the entire history of mankind have the masses of lower IQ serfs been able to organize & overcome the superior cunning of the psychopaths in charge.”

@B9K9,

Seemingly most people don’t even take the time to ponder this predicament. Many who do often feel like they can’t do anything about it anyway. Those individuals have already defeated themselves and those seeking to do something about it. Don’t let the losers call the game.

Possibly the most challenging aspect of all this is generating awareness — getting people to understand the predicament we are in. But spreading awareness is incredibly easy now. We have the internet among other things. Historically the masses didn’t have this type of communication. We must use this to our advantage. We must spread a coherent awareness of our predicament and motivate people to want to act. We must pull people away from their distractions long enough to discuss these circumstances.

As McPherson says, “if the end result is the same either way, why not do, why not act?” As for another common quote found here at Nature Bats Last, “action is the antidote to despair.”

Unless I missed the memo, the last time I checked, NBL was dedicated to the concept of NTE, and NTE equates to most of life being extinct in 20 +/- years. Yes?

Color me a cynic, but I think fascism is not only the obvious recourse given it’s already in full effect both overtly and invertedly, but that it’s the least of our concerns at this rather late stage of development.

Why?

I don’t know, maybe because most of life will soon be extinct regardless of whatever political doctrine is or isn’t in effect. Maybe I’m mistaken, but doesn’t the earth’s thermal inertia sorta trump everything?

Billions of people; everyone we have ever known is going to die prematurely from either being killed by some predator, starvation or suicide. How else does over 7 billion people parish in such a relatively short time span?

Does anyone here think that the TPTB (no matter who you consider “them” to be) is going to just let billions quietly starve to death?

Of course not, because billions of people are going to revolt long before that happens, which is why most people are going to be killed through endless corporate/military subterfuge once Mother Nature makes it impossible to feed the multitudes.

But there is a far, far more pertinent question to be asked at this point in time: Does it even matter?

Honestly, what difference does it make how we’re going to be killed? Whether it’s a bullet to the head, intentionally released bio-agents, starvation in a FEMA camp, radiation fallout, asphyxiation, being burned alive or being stabbed to death by your starving neighbors? At the end of the day we’re just as dead, and we’re going to die a horrible death no matter how NTE plays out, that is, unless we plan our death accordingly.

Contemplating how the TPTB are going to game ‘last man standing’ is but the trivial preoccupation of preppers/survivalists and those with young children in their care who still need to fancy themselves among those who will magically make it through.

Hate to spoil the collapse preparedness rewind party, but no one makes it out of here alive! And those who somehow hold out longer than others will have the distinct privilege of having the last regret.

Yes, it’s terribly depressing. And in lieu of such a brutally stark reality, it’s not surprising our minds scatter looking for even the faintest shadow to take shelter. So if dwelling on lesser orders of socio-political magnitude is how we want to pass the time these days, then bring on the hopium. Let’s all sit around and rehash the last fifteen years of collapse preparedness again for shits and giggles. We can each bring our favorite book—or fifty—and pretend we still have agency to alter the course of NTE through permaculture and how pondering the moves of what can’t be altered somehow makes a difference.

And for all the lingering social activists who just can’t let go of either the blame or illusions of some subjective imperative; the entire premise of human agency has several prerequisites that have never existed en masse. You know little things like: curiosity, awareness, collectivism, compassion and empathy just to name a few. BK9K can attest to the latter.

But then again, projecting our perception of reality unto an otherwise completely daft society has been the cause de-jure since………forever. Or, are we still pretending we ended up at NTE by accident?

So there is no incentive for them to change anything. Indeed, should things ‘go wrong’ in the short term, under the clever set of rules they have introduced, the general populace becomes liable for any losses incurred by them.

Sure, we know the game cannot be played for much longer. But being scientifically illiterate and psychotic, the maniacs at the top do not.

B9K9

‘So, knowing this, why not game the system to your advantage? I mean, you’re entirely correct, and being so essentially means you can actually foretell the future. Do you know what a rare talent that is?’

The answer for me personally is that I discovered the truth -that so-called leaders are psychotic sociopaths, clowns and liars, and that the vast majority of general populace are too dim-witted to see what is right in front of them and generally support status quo- too late.

If I had known 20 years ago what I know now I would have played the game very differently. Knowing 50 years ago what I know now would have been even better. But I could never have known then what I know now. As they say, youth is wasted on the young. Only by opening doors over a period of many years and discovering the ugly things that lie behind them does one become wiser.

With systemic collapse certainly less than 5 years away, almost certainly less 15 months away and possibly as little as a few months away it is too late for me (or for most people) to change track.

” Just a quick reply to someone who mentioned before about keeping pets indoors which is cruel. I once lived with a woman (moron) who kept a bird in a cage if that wasn’t bad enough but they also had a turtle in a tank which was so tiny the poor thing couldn’t even turn round. The ignorant ass even stuck a giant rock in there as well so it spent it’s life wedged on a rock. How fucking insane. I was a guest in the house so all I could do was let them both out for some exercise, with hindsight I should have killed them. What is the matter with these fucking humans? They must have mental issues, seriously, and badly be crippled by them as well. ”

Yes, I witnessed the same cruelty in Bali. Turtles kept in small glass containers with hardly any water or food. On the Street a man with a monkey on a string to cavort for onlookers. Thailand Ko Phi Phi birds kept in cages outside just so they’d sing. Everywhere the rat race just to exist. Bangkok women forced to prostitute themselves to survive. What a shit World! Thailand they round up stray dogs and send them the Vietnam where they’re dropped alive into boiling water to be eaten later. basically I’m sick of the human race and its cruelty. Here in NZ pigs kept in tormenting small crates, pigs are very intelligent and affectionate creatures if given a chance. Then all the wars and killing against our own kind. The existence of nuclear weapons clearly shows we are a homicidal maniac species.

The neece people of our societies do it by successfully ignoring as if it doesn’t exist the immense suffering happening due to human agency. As Callaghan said we deserve to go extinct.

How To Survive
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if you are young and broke,
first win the mental game, prepare;
then git in shape for the physical game, train;
plan for one week survival, plan for more consecutively
work play it forward
make a game plan to join, or start a survival bug out group
find network rural connections of like minded people
focus, don’t be distracted by life or unlike minded people
you will lose family and loved ones
don’t go overboard don’t lay back

***
Mineral Energy Extraction For Sex
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Naomi Klein, Common Dreams, Think Progress, Reddit and all the rest only make you think something is happening when it is not.
Typing to people you don’t know is nothing.
Nine billion horny people don’t give a fuck about Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben. This alone is why we are fucked. We are fucked in so many ways for sure that we can’t even be sure how many.

The Sum Of All Things
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Everybody knows we’re fucked, some think they’ll live in the sky forever, a stupid idea that comforts and suckles. Even the ways we delude ourselves is uncountable.

Why My Bitch Is Hot
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The Amazon is burning, The Boreal is dying, Reefs Bleaching, etc.
Out of the billion who know we’re fucked, most are smart enough to not care. Our duplicity is our survival advantage-weakness.
My dog Daisy has indecent thoughts about me and can’t wait ’til my wife’s gone so she doesn’t have to be the beta bitch no more.

In response to Daniel, the response of the elites to NTHE is quite important to what ordinary people will have to do this. I think the elites have more information on the likelihood and course of NHTE than even scientists.

I suspect that the response is or will wind up being a sort of nihilist sadism let loose on the populace. This will happen because the elites no longer believe in the future and will indulge in their worst instincts. Though I don’t agree with all of the Abbey quote (specifically conscription worked against fascism because it gave the elites a reason to try to improve living standards or at least the diets for ordinary people), it is a good point that large, concentrated populations co-relate very highly historically with social stratification and authoritarianism.

If ordinary people have to deal with the sadism indulged in by elites on top of the bad weather and the lack of available food, it will be too much to deal with for many people.

Arthur C. Clark wasn’t the only person to write about the influencing effects on the evolution of mankind from a field emitting monolith.

Another writer to do this was Doris Lessing in her wonderful book, Shakasta.

Here’s Stanley Kubricks, 2001: A space Odyssey, interpretation of the results of such an influence on early man, leading directly to the savagery of the Nazi fascists, American Empire, Pol Pot regime, etc, etc.

Yes, environmental collapse (coupled declining net energy) does render practically everything else redundant. However, in the face of collapse and the high probability of NTHE occurring mid-century (or before), surely the most important aspect is how humans live now and in the near future. Fighting over the last dregs of oil seems to be TPTB plan.

You ask the question (probably rhetorically)

‘Does anyone here think that the TPTB (no matter who you consider “them” to be) is going to just let billions quietly starve to death?’

TPBT currently let around 30,000 a day quietly starve to death, so why would they be concerned if the number were to increase to 300,000 a day? As long as those people are predominantly in Africa, South America or Asia, TPTB could not care less. Even tens of millions living in poverty in ‘developed’ nations does not cause TPTB to blink an eye. They seem to be more interested in the next venue for super-yacht gatherings than the welfare of ordinary humans.

I really do not have any answers as to what to do, having tried everything within my means and having made very little difference. Nevertheless, I maintain that actions should be geared to reducing the suffering that is to come, as opposed to TPTB plans which are geared to increasing the suffering that is to come.

We’re not going to be taking over, but the elite will not have the numbers when it gets crazed. And any elites who think the mercs and army will stay with them indefinitely should check out the 2nd clip. When it gets strange, what do the elites have to offer? Power? cf Mao on where it comes from.

Sorry for not compacting the clips…technical issues…whaddyagonnado?
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Entergy to shut down PILGRIM reactor in Mass. Yes, LIDIA it is all about corrupt profits to Entergy who make a ton from decades of decomissioning — however, money is printed crap. Reactors are really dangerous and it’s well worth it to remove them. No matter the $ cost your region will survive better without the close meltdown factor. Pilgrim deal is officially signed today.

The think tank Chatham Houselooked at the cybersecurity of power plants spread across the globe for a period of 18 months. They conducted 30 interviews with government officials and senior nuclear officials in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, Ukraine and the US.[1]

The results of the study were sobering. In particular, the report found that nuclear power plants sprinkled across the globe were lacking in a number of basic security protocols. For example, weak passwords vulnerable to hacking, like “1234,” were used on a wide range of computer systems that control critical systems in power plants.

“Cyber security is still new to many in the nuclear industry,” Caroline Baylon, an author of the study, told the Financial Times. “They are really good at safety and, after 9/11, they’ve got really good at physical security. But they have barely grappled with cyber.”[1]

The researchers also found that many engineers bring their personal computers into work to manage facility systems. In addition, digital back doors are becoming increasingly common as companies use more monitoring systems.
A myth squandered

The report also squandered a prevalent myth that computer systems at nuclear facilities are invulnerable to hacking because they are disconnected from the public internet. To the contrary: The gap between the public internet and nuclear systems can easily be bridged with nothing but a hard drive, according to the report.

“Many people said it was simply not possible to cause a major incident like a release of ionising radiation with a cyber attack,” said Baylon, “but that’s not necessarily true.”[1]

Authors of the study concluded that a lack of communication between engineers and security personnel, coupled with insufficient training, were the reasons why so many power plants were susceptible to cyberattacks.

“This suggests the industry’s risk assessment may be inadequate; as a consequence, there is often insufficient spending on cyber security.”[1]

Kirk…. 2001 A Space Odyssey…..Thanks for finding these excellent clips. Greatest film ever made, and the sequence in which ape becomes man is Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, never equaled in any film. The monolith bridging the gap between apes and the moment of the coming of age of the human species was, even though only a glimpse of what might have been, brilliant.
Cindy, Only recently our 40 year old son asked us to take care of our grandchildren’s turtle, a beautiful specimen. We felt so bad fore the turtle, imprisoned in a tiny fish tank and so eager for attention that we felt saddened whenever feeding time was over, if only because the turtle would once again be facing the day all by itself. If turtles feel loneliness, this turtle qualified.
We talked about getting it another turtle for company, but were told that their mating instincts would enhance their fighting behavior, and so decided against it. We even contemplated releasing it in a pond where there are other turtles, knowing full well that its freedom would be short-lived, still better than being in a cage from which it was always trying to exit.
I guess turtle-talk doesn’t quite do it to debate fascist qualities. Being an animal under human supervision I suppose can be imagined as fascist pursuits since the animals are the complete slaves of their owners.

Mark: every time i post a specific article [here] that “outs” the threat to life by the world’s nuclear plants (by hacking) i get a 404 page not found warning. [i’ll try again below without the source – ComputerWorld]

A report on the growing cyber risks to nuclear power plant quotes anonymous insiders who reveal a lack of cybersecurity awareness, design flaws, threat actors, cyber-attack scenarios and backbiting among personnel.

[begins]

The risk of serious cyber-attacks on nuclear power plants is growing, according to a new report by think-tank Chatham House. If you follow this type of news, then this is probably not a big shocker, but did you know there have been around 50 cyberattacks on nuclear plants?

One unnamed expert quoted in the Chatham report (pdf) claimed, “What people keep saying is ‘wait until something big happens, then we’ll take it seriously’. But the problem is that we have already had a lot of very big things happen. There have probably been about 50 actual control systems cyber incidents in the nuclear industry so far, but only two or three have been made public.” The report claimed that there is limited incident disclosure and a “need to know” mindset that further limits collaboration and information-sharing. [lots more]

“….the entire premise of human agency has several prerequisites that have never existed en masse. You know little things like: curiosity, awareness, collectivism, compassion and empathy just to name a few. BK9K can attest to the latter. ”

“En masse” is the important thing here. Individual choice, agency here, on this physical level we all experience as our world, is something different all together. This was my pint all along.

When I mentioned “fee will” I naturally assumed that we were talking, here on NBL, about agency on our shared physical level. I can’t talk about anything else, and even quantum physicists don’t live on the quantum level. We all experience this level, the one where all biological entities are all born and die. The one our species is destroying, our biosphere.

You are always aware of that most important fact – as am I. Anything else is idle talk – but, in spite of everything, it’s still something I like to do while I can. And it’s OK as long as the awareness of the context (dying biosphere) is never lost.

“But then again, projecting our perception of reality unto an otherwise completely daft society has been the cause de-jure since………forever. Or, are we still pretending we ended up at NTE by accident?”

No accident!

Yes, yes, yes!
I’m totally with you.

Talking here is just spending time until and sharing our thoughts.
Anybody here on NBL who doesn’t know by now that NTE is inevitable is still in total denial.
No life as we know it is going to make it. Thanks for getting this most important point said once again. And it won’t be the last time.

When I comment, share my thoughts and experiences, I NEVER forget that. I simply can’t understand that you can let go, go back into denial (hopium) once this fact is truly grasped with every cell of your body.
Yet people do but it’s foolish.

It’s just the coping of it that’s different for different people.
I’ve found my way without going into depression. It’s just great sadness and anger (obviously not all the time) I feel but I can cope with that.

It’s always gratifying to see so many people denouncing our UN-acknowledged cruelty to animals.

W/O intending to upset anybody’s sensibilities about anything, I offer Hermann Goring’s National Socialist pronouncement that Germans must always demonstrate human kindness in the treatment of all animal life.

Whenever I tell people that Adolph Hitler was an animal lover & dedicated vegetarian, they are absolutely incredulous.

I am sure that some will claim that these simple facts are other than anti-cruelty to animals.

@Mark, thank you.
“Cyber security is still new to many in the nuclear industry…” This is total BS. It may not be front and center, but then a lot of security infrastructure has lapsed out of laziness, poverty, and dis-interest, like bridges, for example, which aren’t ‘cyber-‘anything. “1234” passwords were just as discouraged and vulnerable back in the days of FORTRAN.

“Systems can easily be bridged with nothing but a hard drive, according to the report.” Again, we don’t need a fucking report to tell us this “news”. You might as easily say that systems could be compromised by “a stack of punch cards, or a paper tape”, or a paper CLIP!

There is no “security” that cannot be out-run by an intrepid opponent. In Rome, a lot of people buy “porte blindate” (armored doors) for their condos. These are heavy steel affairs with bolts three or four feet long, even, costing thousands. Thieves then come in with Sawz-Alls and just cut through the wall instead, or haul themselves up the side of the building and in through the balcony. The freaky thing about doors in Italy is that they either automatically lock closed (so its painfully easy to get locked out) OR the residents have a disturbingly common practice of locking THEMSELVES IN, so that you need a key to EXIT the apartment. This made my MIL feel “safe”, but I felt nervous as hell.. what if there were a fire? Oy. An awful sensation of being imprisoned (and pointlessly so, by one’s own fears).

The only chance we had for nuclear security was to not have mastered and employed it in the first place. The words “nuclear” and “security” don’t belong in the same sentence; they are a joke, an oxymoron. Always have been.

B9K9 is the Red Fox, and the White Fox is artleads or someone like that. I see myself as the photographer, and there are some other folks here in that role (for now anyway.. it’s a role stemming from luxury).

Now, someone said earlier that Guy hadn’t come to a point of acceptance; he still sounded angry. I think that’s true. I’m not saying I never have some of the same anger, but I’m curious to examine where it comes from. When we think about the rat-overcrowding experiments where they exhibit psychotic behavior and resort to cannibalism, are we angry at the rats? Why not? Why do we need to believe in any kind of exceptional human morality that would have us behave differently?

Do anyone think the red fox in the photo was visited by an alien monolith, or does that only apply to humans? People believe in gods and aliens because they can’t accept that they are merely the red fox or the white fox, or some fox to be named later.

The Japanese in the clip above.. the Nazis, the Rwandans.. they found “innovative” responses to resource pressures. We are going to see this sort of thing increase.

As for Dick Cheney, the “tribal member ejecting a sociopath” part of me says, yes, he should be eliminated. But I wouldn’t see it as a matter of punishment, rather of social protection. Just hang him in the square/push him off a cliff. At the same time, whether Dick Cheney exists or not is not going to change things: he’s as much of a symptom as he is a cause. Getting rid of the Dick Cheneys protects the group and gives the rest greater chances of breeding and material success, so you really end up in the same place either way, eventually.

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@Ed: “I suspect that the response is or will wind up being a sort of nihilist sadism let loose on the populace.”

If I get a 2-fer-1 coupon on tasers, maybe I’ll mail one to Guy or drop it off next time I’m going east or west on I-10. You can assess the efficacy of yours any way you prefer (almost said ‘choose’). I think I’ll wait for an unwitting assailant who poses a serious threat to see if mine works.

As to aliens, some people seem to believe them based on the hundreds of thousands of other ordinary folks who have seen weird stuff in the skies that even the old white fuckers in lab coats can’t come up with a plausible rationale for. Check out the nerd to power of nerd type ATC people in the Disclosure Project documentary. And their higher-ups. Could be part of a huge disinformation campaign, but if so, to what end do you suppose? Too big a box for me to get outside of.

When Hillary Clinton gets elected president pundits will celebrate this as a huge advancement in equality. Superficially it will be, but in reality it will be nothing more than patriarchy with ovaries. The march toward fascism continues apace.

Speaking of ovaries, I heard a black lady feminist on the radio today that said she felt alienated by white feminists because they are the first ones to support war, without batting an eye about women being slaughtered along with men.

whitey strikes again – as usual – it is pathetically obvious.

Women in power are exactly like men. Just as patriarchal. Just as sickening.
Just like Romanian Dictators Nicolae and Elena. Two peas in a pod.

Alex Jones On eckoshock radio has intervied (the first person in the interview) http://soundcloud.com/radioecoshock/how-we-might-survive
this person laurence brahms or something like that his name i would characterize him as a wide beady eyed moron speaking about how china will lead the world in renewables and and an economic and environmental renewal One clueless retard

I gained some insight into my frustration with Republicans several months ago, during a longish car ride with my sister and her husband. We got talking about the Baltimore riots and unrest around racial relations and an aspect of it being due to the ‘under-privileged masses’. My hard working brother-in-law who is staunchly Republican concluded his position in favor of allowing the unbridled pursuit of wealth via Capitalism with a resigned sigh, stating, “maybe we will see fascism” or something to that effect. In thinking about it, in the months afterward, it occurred to me, this wasn’t just a resigned, defeatist conclusion, but rather, this is what Republicans want. It’s clear, if you look at the way the party is systematically dismantling everything that tries to balance out any inequality that comes from the uneven playing field. How else might they deal with the chaos that comes as a result of the dehumanizing effects of corporatocracy? It’s their religion, after all, and anyone who does not subscribe to it deserves hell. There is no overriding need for anything close to a concept of humanity. Hard work is the only virtue deserving of reward even if you are working hard to destroy the planet and everything that lives upon it. That you are working hard at something that commands a pay check is simply all that matters! Don’t ask them to think critically or exercise compassion, those things are not part of the drill!

“Trapped by the culture of make believe, these parents cannot bring themselves to imagine a different world. A better world. A world without the boot of the police state on the necks of their children. A world with more carnivores every year, instead of fewer.”

Um… do you mean to imply that a world with “more carnivores, not fewer” is the better world they can’t imagine? Unless you completely buy into the Lierre Keith diet, I can’t see why having more carnivores — consuming far greater resources than vegetarians — would be counted as a better world.

@ Lidia: I’ve played the Act 250 game a few times, and it ain’t much fun. Just wait ’till you get into the arena, and find out that everyone on the board and all the developers and all their lawyers are on a chummy, first-name basis. And then try to feel like an equal participant in a meaningful exercise of democracy. At least the chair is a decent fellow — and an actual hard-working organic farmer — whom I knew somewhat when we lived in Thetford, so there’s a chance for a reasonable outcome. Not too surprised at the library hi-jinks, though… it’s public property, so it SHOULD be a forum where *any* viewpoint is welcome, but we — ha, THEY! — know better. Note that if you were not rocking the boat of complacency and conscription, “Why, it would be just fine, ma’am!” (with a few bats of the eyelashes, to boot)

It’s always gratifying to see so many people denouncing our UN-acknowledged cruelty to animals.

W/O intending to upset anybody’s sensibilities about anything, I offer Hermann Goring’s National Socialist pronouncement that Germans must always demonstrate human kindness in the treatment of all animal life.

Whenever I tell people that Adolph Hitler was an animal lover & dedicated vegetarian, they are absolutely incredulous.

I am sure that some will claim that these simple facts are other than anti-cruelty to animals.

Gerald, thank you so much for sharing that wonderful, noble speech by Herr Goering!

Everyone should read it…really!

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:

First, this quote: “It goes against the thinking of a German, especially against the ideology of National Socialism to equate an animal with inanimate matter”.

—

To prevent the further expansion of cruelty to animals in the interim, while the law was finalized, I decreed under the powers given to me, the protective incarceration in concentration camps, for those who think that animals are a mere matter.

—

For the German people animals were considered to be creatures of the flesh, not just in an organic sense, but that they show feelings of pain, joy, loyalty and attachment. Never was it in the consciousness of the people to think of animals as a soulless, lifeless, unfeeling object to be exploited or as a tool for labor, or to be utilized for a subject of usefulness, to be abused or even killed. The fairytales and legends of Aryan people, foremost the German folk, demonstrate their spirit of unity which the Aryans show toward animals.

—

It was a sad hallmark of science in a period of two decades before and after WW 1 by thinking in a materialistic way using chemical and physical experiments, aided by loopholes in the existing law. This method of dealing with animals was unacceptable to a German. Not only French experimenters, like the infamous Claud Fernar, but also Germans, but mostly alien scientists performed horrendous cruelties, which if there was a small gain, would have never made any sense in relation to pain inflicted. Quite a few of these scientists, many, aliens amongst them, seem to have lost their sensitivity for their actions, or they never had any to begin with. One can find examples of this in old literature describing procedures without anesthetization of the worst kind, such as operations, inflicting burns, freezing, hunger and more, all this showing no sign of human compassion.

—

Vivisection – the cutting of an unanaesthetizised animal was used. Among the laboratory animals were rats, guinea pigs, rabbits and what people abhorred the most, the human companion – the dog. They all were used to cut into the body to reveal the heart, chiseling into the brain, cutting limbs off to observe the reaction of the animal and the consequences thereof. It is unfathomable to us National Socialists why pain was not eliminated when operating on the animal and if so, it was done without care, since it was a mere animal.

—

There are also some touching pictures, and a very sensitively done drawing of a dog by Herr Hitler – a well known vegetarian and animal lover. These pictures alone make looking at the magazine worthwhile. Take a look…and see if it doesn’t bring tears to your eyes!

1. Changing the rules of the game between participants in the political process.
2. Introducing into the mass consciousness new concepts, values, opinions and convictions.
3. Direct manipulation of human behavior through mass media and administrative methods.

Political technologies pursue these tactical goals in accordance with higher, strategic imperatives, and it is only the noble nature of these higher imperatives that can justify the use of such high-handed, nondemocratic means. Yes, the ends justify the means—once in a while. It is better to save humanity and the natural world through nondemocratic means than to let it go extinct while adhering to strictly democratic ones.

But often the imperatives are far less than noble. They can be separated into two kinds:

1. To improve everyone’s welfare by pursuing the common good of the entire society, as it is understood by its best-educated, most intelligent, most decent and responsible members. Political technologies of this kind result in a virtuous cycle, building on previous successes to increase social cohesion, solidarity and setting the stage for great achievements. (These are the good kind.)

2. To enrich, empower and protect special interests at the expense of the rest of society. These kinds of political technologies either fail through internal contradiction, or result in a vicious cycle, in which those who benefit from them strive for ever-higher levels of selfish behavior at the expense of the rest, setting the stage for poor social outcomes, economic stagnation, mass violence and eventual civil war and political disintegration. (These are the bad kind.)

Let’s take the United States as an example The United States currently has more than its fair share of the latter sort. Let’s briefly review a dozen of the most important ones.

1. The fossil fuel lobby. Objective: convince the US population that catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is not occurring. Means: smear campaigns against climate scientists, injection of fake science, denigration of science as a whole, portrayal of the movement to stop catastrophic climate change as a conspiracy, etc. Shows some signs of failing through internal contradiction, as parts of South Carolina—a self-styled “conservative” state—go underwater in a so-called “thousand-year flood” (soon to be renamed a “hundred-year flood,” then “ten-year flood” and, finally, a “blub-blub-blub” flood). Unlike North Carolina, Florida (another “blub-blub-blub” state) and Wisconsin, South Carolina hasn’t banned the use of the term “climate change” by state workers; not that anyone has heard them use it in any case. When political technologists start banning the use of words, you know that they are becoming desperate. At a meta-polittechnological level, when a polittechnology shows signs of failing through internal contradiction, it is often best to let things run their course. After all, what does it matter whether officials in the Carolinas or in Florida use the term “climate change” or the term “blub-blub-blub”?

2. The arms manufacturers. Objective: convince the US population that private gun ownership makes people safer, is effective in preventing government tyranny, and is a right to be defended at all costs. This too is showing some signs of failure through internal contradiction, as the number of mass shootings in the US shoots up. But the level of brainwash here is rather high, and the US authorities may find themselves forced to resort to direct manipulation to bring the situation under control (or so they would hope). This may involve some sort of mass standoff between the government and the “gun nuts,” in which the gun nuts are described as terrorists, outlawed and, in a demonstration exercise, instantaneously wiped out by the army, the navy and the air force. But this would only bring out the next layer of internal contradiction: in decisively demonstrating that owning a gun does not make one safer, and that guns are useless in preventing tyranny, the government would be forced to tacitly admit that it is, in fact a tyranny, at war with its own people. And this would undermine a number of other political technologies on which the government depends for its political survival.

3. The two-party political system, along with the lobbyists and its corporate, big-money and foreign sponsors. Objective: keep the people believing that the US is a democracy and that people have a choice. On the one hand, this technology seems to be working. A lot of the people voted for Obama (some of them twice!) and then had a difficult time facing up to the fact that he is an impostor, barely different from his predecessor, and that everything he had said to get their vote was just hopeful noise. And now a lot of these same people are ready to vote again—for some other democratic career politician making similar kinds of hopeful noise. On the other hand, this piece of political technology seems to be in rather sad shape. The party machinery seems unable to produce viable candidates. The Republicans are internally in disarray and seem especially vulnerable to being upstaged by outsiders like Trump. Moreover, most of the voters no longer identify with either party—an unnerving development for political technologists in charge of herding them toward one of the political spectrum or the other.

4. The defense contractors and the national defense establishment. Objective: justify exorbitant defense budgets by claiming that they keep the nation safe by thwarting evildoers or some such nonsense. The US has a very expensive defense establishment, but a very ineffectual one. Case in point: as the hostilities in Syria threaten to escalate, the US orders the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt out of the Persian Gulf, leaving it without a US aircraft carrier there for the first time in 6 years. The reason is simple: although very expensive and impressive looking, American aircraft carriers are only effective against very weak and disorganized adversaries. When it comes to major powers such as Russia, China and Iran they are no more than sitting ducks, being defenseless against attacks by supersonic cruise missiles and supercavitating torpedoes, which the Americans simply don’t have. Such obvious signs of weakness (and there are many others) undermine the claim that defense dollars are money well spent. After a time, the message is bound to sink in that the US defense establishment produces useless military boondoggles and baseless, dreamed-up intelligence reports, resulting in a serious internal contradiction. Couple the relative impotence of American high-tech weaponry against similarly equipped adversaries with the inability or unwillingness to deploy ground troops (after the great “successes” in the meat grinders of Iraq and Afghanistan) and you have an erstwhile superpower whose ability to project force is rather circumscribed. Why, then, does it cost so much? Defeat can be had for a lot less money. A sign of desperation is the latest US initiative to drop palettes of small arms ammunition and hand grenades into the deserts of Northern Syria, hoping that some “moderate” (LOL) terrorist would find them and use them against the Syrian government.

The list goes on but, for the sake of brevity, and as an exercise for the reader, I will let the reader fill in the details about the remaining examples of bad political technologies that are found in the US. The information is not hard to find. Ask yourself whether these technologies will fail through internal contradiction, by triggering a wider conflict, or by causing widespread degeneracy in the population they afflict.

5. The medical industry. Objective: keep people convinced that private health insurance is necessary, that exorbitant medical costs are justified, that socialized medicine is somehow evil, and that they are getting good quality medical care in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

6. The higher education industry. Objective: keep people convinced that higher education in the US is a good value in spite of its exorbitant costs, the student debt crisis, and the fact that over half of recent university and college graduates have been unable to find professional employment.

7. The prison-industrial complex. Objective: keep people convinced that imprisoning a higher percentage of the population than did Stalin, mostly for nonviolent, victimless crimes, somehow keeps people safe, in spite of there being absolutely no evidence of that.

8. The automotive industry. Objective: keep people convinced that the private automobile is the hallmark of personal freedom while denigrating public transportation, in spite of the fact that if you factor in all of the costs and the externalities of private cars and translate them into the working hours it takes to pay for them, driving a car turns out to be slower than walking.

9. The agribusiness industry. Objective: keep people convinced that a diet made up of cheap, chemical-laden, industrially produced food is somehow acceptable in spite of the high levels of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and other ailments in which it results.

10. The financial industry. Objective: keep people convinced that their money is safe even as it disappears into an ever-expanding black hole of unrepayable debt.

11. Organized religion. Objective: keep people convinced that kowtowing to a big white man in the sky, who might send you to hell in spite of the fact that he loves you, and who, in spite of being all-powerful, always needs your money, takes precedence over using your own reason and relying on facts to find your own way in the world. Cause simple-minded people to insist that a worked-over story of the Egyptian god Horus, stuck together with bits of the Gilgamesh Epic and other ancient myths, is the word of God and the absolute literal truth. Keep alive the fiction that religious people are somehow more moral or more ethical than nonreligious people.

12. The legal system. Objective: keep people convinced that the legal system somehow produces justice instead of selling positive outcomes to the highest bidder, that feeding a huge army of well-paid lawyers is somehow worth the money, and that obeying a codex of laws so voluminous and so convoluted that is completely incomprehensible to the average person, and most lawyers, is what it means to be a good citizen.

As you see, the US has quite a parasite load of bad political technologies. Each special interest group can hire some political technologists to put together a system for them that will assure them of a disproportionately large piece of the pie to the detriment of everyone else.

This is bad enough, but bad political technologies cause an additional problem: they debilitate the minds of those they afflict. Their main objective is to keep people convinced of things that are false. Once they succeed, these people become personally invested in these falsehoods, come to identify with them, and regard any information that contradicts them either as a personal affront or, at the very least, as a source of unwelcome cognitive dissonance. This makes them impervious to good political technologies—ones that seek to convince them of things that are true and of approaches that do in fact work, and steer them in the direction of doing what is necessary. They are what Andy Borowitz called “fact-resistant humans.”

Because of its high parasite load of bad political technologies, the population of the US may not be worth the trouble when it comes to putting together good political technologies, such as the one to prevent catastrophic climate change. A lot of these bad political technologies are poised to fail, either through internal contradiction, or because of their deleterious effects on the people held in their spell, so it makes sense to wait.

Also, the problem of the US being a major polluter and climate disrupter may resolve itself: the US stands to suffer immensely from climate change, with the west coast and the southwest running out of water, the south decimated by heat waves and the eastern seaboard disappearing under the waves. Keep in mind that it amounts to less than 5 percent of the world’s population—a significant number, but not significant enough to hold up the rest of the planet.

Trying to negotiate with the US when it comes to preventing catastrophic climate change is starting to seem like a waste of time. Why should the 95 percent wait for the 5 percent to dig a deep enough hole for themselves? But what wouldn’t be a waste of time? This is the question we will take up next.

@BVinVT, that head of the commission is one hot mess. He is absolutely on a “chummy, first-name basis” with the applicant’s high-powered lawyer, Peter van Oot, who blatantly whores out his services as one who can shepherd a project through for his clients with a minimum of resistance. I watched Tim Taylor and van Oot making lovey-dovey eyes as van Oot said—concertedly oblivious to anyone else in the room—in that macho stance where his legs are open wide and his arm is flung over the back of the chair, like he is sitting in his living room… “we’ll work something out, JUST LIKE WE DID WITH GIFFORD” (a crazy sprawling for-profit assisted-living facility situated only a few hundred yards from this contested mega-development (and miles away from its linked hospital close to the downtown). Plenty of space around the downtown hospital and in a nearby industrial zone to have situated that facility.. but no.. they had to use the prime ag land up at the exit for whatever perverted reason. Van Oot jumps, and Taylor follows (right out of the room if you take a look on ORCA media at the last few minutes of the hearing from Sept 25. There’s no direct link but go to the playlists, at the end under “Misc” and it will come up maybe third or fourth on the list. Last 20 minutes or so are alarming. Quite the kerfluffle…).http://www.orcamedia.net/

LWA is right, this is a fool’s errand, but what else have I got to do?

Tim Taylor, anyway, is an ass. He came to two hearings with a blue paperboard quart bucket of tomatoes that he perched in front of his place. Like an apple for the teacher, except in reverse, he was offering them to himself!! LOL. The last hearing, I brought all manner of squash, peppers, and shallots that were bigger than his tomatoes.

Taylor is either an intentional liar or is schizophrenic. After a great deal of time was spent at the first hearing as to who could/couldn’t hold party status.. he said to our group at the last hearing: “why didn’t you ask for party status!?!? WE WOULD HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU“. This was out in the hallway, in violation of the state’s Open Meeting rules.

He is insane, and/or just saying what he wants other people to hear at any given moment. I have no doubt he can appear “normal”, “earnest” or “sincere”, but at the hearing he constantly interrupted our group. He allowed the applicant’s lawyers to object to this and that, but when Sandy Levine of CLF objected to something, he snarled, “oh, you want to get LITIGIOUS!?!?”.. It was a circus. Nobody knew which end was up. When Taylor wanted things to be “informal. We’re not a court here” then they were informal. But then the hammer would come down. Just one of many examples: Taylor repeatedly said he didn’t understand how it was “relevant” that the applicant owned other property upon which all or part of the development could go (this is a clear stipulation of criteria 9B). What can one do when faced with a judicial system that turns a blind eye to the law? I’m not sure which is worse to contemplate, that Taylor doesn’t want to follow the law, or that he does not understand it. (Or, he doesn’t have any free will and is just a submissive bobblehead intimidated by van Oot, as we are all bobbleheads..)

97% of Act 250 requests are approved. Sammis (the developer) is such a nasty character that he well deserves to find himself on the wrong side of that statistic, however unlikely that may be.

Wanna join the fun? Monday, Oct 19. 3 p.m. site visit across from McDonald’s on Rt. 66 off of Exit 4. Hearing open to the public will be held immediately following at Gifford Mem. Hospital on Rt. 12 south; will end by 7:00 p.m.

Re Orlov’s post. We have to remember that stopping the use of fossil fuels would mean the death of at least 5 billion within months. Our last hope of retaining a long term inhabitable planet. Possible a futile effort anyway.
Seems like a good idea to me,but I suspect I am in the minority.
Would the remaining population suddenly become ecologically knowledgeable
and set about creating a foundation for long term sustainability? Fat chance. Industrial Civilisation ? A better term would be ‘Fantasy Bubble’,or ‘Death Spiral’

Cenk on the TYT show(The Young Turks) today mentioned he noticed far to many days above 100 degrees where he lives California.When you can see climate change with your eyes we are on the blade of the hockey stick going up.Remember Gore using the forklift and graph.Things gonna change fast.Glass half full … may not be more salmon this year but we have more CO2,may not be more polar bears this year but we have more methane.Was out hunting last weekend and sat down on mountain bluff to eat snack and enjoy view .Was attacked by grey jays that I started hand feeding. 1 on each hand 3 between my legs and one on my head.They had little fear of me and it was amazing.Enjoying mother nature till the end.
ps. I also enjoy watching shallow people that love Trump

TOM – thank you because I heard others talk about the 404 and other NSA editorial deletions. A close friend at the FBI says that sometimes when someone is trying to text a serious tip on security risk it gets deleted from his system. Until I am no longer under contract I can not say more about the reasons we are not to disturb the general public or involve them in concerns about our safety systems.

Both Tom & Lidia are correct about the obvious flaws in the Chatham report. Makes you wonder when you read between the lines.

‘wait until something big happens, then we’ll take it seriously’. But the problem is that we have already had a lot of very big things happen. There have probably been about 50 actual control systems cyber incidents in the nuclear industry so far, but only two or three have been made public.” The report claimed that there is limited incident disclosure and a “need to know” mindset that further limits collaboration and information-sharing….Also a lot of political ego between the NRC, International atomic agencies and Dept of Energy who controls our budget.

TOM I posted my gmail for you a few days back if you want me to mail the General Lloyd Austin central command doc. before I depart D.C. My contract ends this Dec.

Re, my comment above,just to point out that the other option,of continuing the use of fossil oil,will result in the death of more people this century,probably before mid century,and leave behind a greater wasteland than we have now,plus an unproductive,jellyfish dominated ocean ecosystem. Possibly a canfield ocean . The oil will be finished this century anyway,so we are caught in an inescapable progress trap.
Long term planning? What’s that? Nah. Let’s just do whatever seems like a good idea at the time.

James,
I tried to post a fairly long comment,then a short comment,at your site today,and just tried again now,and each time it wouldn’t post,and a message appeared,stating that the captcha time had expired.
It is a pity. The first comment listed solutions to our predicament,and now I’ve forgotten, Ah Well. Nevermind.

Even Robert Oppenheimer could barely control his emotional enthusiasm for the Manhattan Project until it was done and he had handed the weapons to the “ethical infants”. Even those religiously conditioned to squat upon their limbic desires have difficulty sometimes in controlling them. The bankers have no problem in supporting cancerous growth until exhaustion of resources is complete and the ecosystem is trashed (but at least Blankfein got to be a billionaire). The MIC has no problem with creating adversaries whose elimination is good for the bottom line and then calling themselves heroes. The average citizen has no problem in not thinking at all and expecting things to turn out because we’re the most “advanced” species on earth. But, if they look closely at themselves, they’ll see that they’re no longer a “species” but rather tool-using component in the new technological cells. I think we can conclude that the same kinds of deaths, collapses and extinctions that occur in the organic world can also occur in the technological one. At this moment Rosy the RNA riveter may be warming-up for yet another stint in the defense contractor’s factories.

here’s a quicker road to fascism
1…develop a nation over 100 years, to a population of 330 million
2…arm them—by right
3….convince them that a bronze age god has granted them immunity to the laws of physics and that same god has granted them a right to infinite prosperity.
4….convince them that world resources are theirs by force of arms
5….when their resource base finally runs dry, also convince them that future prosperity is a matter of political will
6….when this doesn’t work elect a head of state/government that promises to restore national ‘greatness’, by invoking the power of aforementioned bronze age god (nothing else having worked)
7…when that doesn’t work either, and the nation begins to devolve into disparate regions, the head of state blames ‘unbelievers’ for his god’s displeasure.
8….head of state declares national emergency, and assumes dictatorial powers (temporary of course) backed up by a god infected military
9….devolved regions of the state embark on civil war to prove who’s god is strongest
10 ….whichever region emerges as the strongest, declares their god as supreme, and institutes a regime of theo-fascism.

Whimsical????—maybe. But without constantly available cheap hydrocarbon energy, —-maybe not

I never think that I can make the slightest difference with such types, so all I’ve done is run my mouth and act without any expectation of results. But a seeming recent victory in my area suggested an approach that feels effortless as well:

– Latch on to a leader, make the most of their effort and never miss a meeting or a chance to speak or write.

– Crowds matter. One commission meeting brought out well over 600 people (to protest an egregious gravel mine proposal).

– It doesn’t matter what the development project is. If it’s on open land (GREENFIELDS development) it should be opposed. I jumped on to the project without seeing or particularly caring about the site–which turned out to be hugely significant anyway. As long as somebody is willing to lead, I will follow.

– All development needs to go where there is development already (BROWNFIELDS development).

– A petition drive matters. “We” got over 4,000 signatures to present to the 5-member board of commissioners. (I hate asking for signatures, but I did a little stint at a fair, largely so the the group would approve of me, and somewhat to add just one tiny smidgen of effort to the opposition’s effort.

– Think broadly who might be allies. Think outside the box. A good writer who can get published in the local and regional papers can look at the development in an unfamiliar way–eg. making a case for climate change or economic meltdown, etc., as a reason not to develop. Think of different and unusual angles.

– The left brain, bureaucratic types, who can deal with legal discrepancies are important to bring out.

And much more. But I find the sense of effortlessness on my part to be the key.

James, technological/ecological determinism as a research strategy requires the inextricable conjoining of the material organic base of the ecosystem (habitat) with culturally developed technologies.

Mankind can only take lower entropy energy from the ecosystem in order to survive.

He can do it most efficiently by using Lotka’s exosomatic tools.

He can do it so efficiently that he can cause his own extinction, as we observe.

Separating the “organic” from the technological is a supreme & fatal error.

We can’t get away with such a dramatic separation, if we claim to be holding true with our research strategy of what causes what.

Before man can build gigantic electrical generating plants, Airbus 380 aircraft, & propel himself to the moon; he must eat & drink.

As rudimentary a premise as it is, intellectuals routinely ignore such vulgar organic materialism/physicalism.

So, I consider your following statements separating the organic from the technological to be fatal errors.

“But, if they look closely at themselves, they’ll see that they’re no longer a “species” but rather tool-using component in the new technological cells. I think we can conclude that the same kinds of deaths, collapses and extinctions that occur in the organic world can also occur in the technological one.”

Moreover, it can be scientifically claimed that such an “intellectual” division is a significant part of how we are continuing to pollute the entire atmospheric commons with deadly CO2 to the point of NTHE.

Easter Island’s social & environmental collapse is a shining example of conjoined technology & organic ecology leading to destruction of organic habitat.

Kevin Moore says “If I had known 20 years ago what I know now I would have played the game very differently. Knowing 50 years ago what I know now would have been even better.”

My original posts @ NBL didn’t address the concept of NTE in the context of the discussions concerning deep green resistance then taking place (Daniel was still an advocate at the time), but rather a series of comments directed towards the futility of the endeavor.

And why did I feel it was a foolish waste of time grieving over command/control systems that were firmly in place & events that had already transpired? Because the PTB were perfectly aware of the situation of resource depletion, population overshoot & environmental degradation (eg NTE), and had (rightfully) concluded that since there wasn’t any feasible way out, why not simply charge full steam ahead?

This led to a series of posts discussing the differences between the PTB and the intelligentsia ie academics/professionals, with the primary conclusion being that the only thing separating the two were life choices made based on hereditary advantages. That is, there isn’t the slightest degree of difference in cognitive abilities, but rather a cultural basis for choosing (or being directed towards) a career.

In essence, while intelligent, high achieving students like Guy were directed towards academia, more cunning groups understood that their wards should pursue careers in finance & politics. And while earnest, fair minded people like Daniel & Guy were being inculcated with false ideas of egalitarianism, their PTB peers were already being versed in the arts of deception, rule & order.

So yes, after some period of time, one may reach a state of awareness of how the ‘world really works’, only to find out that they arrived at the party too late. So, what to do? The easy way out is complain, criticize, etc to demonstrate your information state (still looking for the ego boost), or you can keep quiet and figure out a way to erase some of the gaps.

I think a person like Daniel illustrates this principle very well. He fully understands the situation at hand: we have a population overshoot of around 6-7b souls. How will the PTB handle this unsustainable proposition? With milk & cookies? What chances do preppers have against a directed assault via bio/chem attacks? So, once you see how this is going to play out, in the short-term it’s fairly trivial to take positions that will pay off (at least temporarily).

At a certain level of abstraction, this entire process is completely fascinating. We are the generation that it’s occurring. What value is that to be here at this time & place?

Life is a deterministic horror film, a Truman Show. You may even forget about quantum mechanics when you discuss the mechanisms active inside our brains because our brains operate at body temperature and quantum correlations between nerve cells are washed away by thermal fluctuations.

Therefore the brain is a classical physics system and the present state of the classical physics brain is entirely sufficient to determine the next state of the brain. But then, there is NOTHING for mind to do, and NO WAY for mind to do it! It would be like asking mind to alter the trajectories of the balls on the billiard table.

We are collections of tiny billiard balls obeying the deterministic laws of classical physics. There is no free will and there is no mental causation: mind does nothing – it doesn’t have any causal power. Decisions emerge from prior brain activity. In theory it might be possible to trace the causal pathway of a decision all the way back to the big bang. Neuroscientists can already trace it back 10 seconds.

The commentary demonstrates the endemic bias prevalent amongst many of those developing emission scenarios to severely underplay the scale of the 2°C mitigation challenge. In several important respects the modelling community is self-censoring its research to conform to the dominant political and economic paradigm. Moreover, there is a widespread reluctance of many within the climate change community to speak out against unsupported assertions that an evolution of ‘business as usual’ is compatible with the IPCC’s 2°C carbon budgets. With specific reference to energy, this analysis concludes that even a slim chance of “keeping below” a 2°C rise, now demands a revolution in how we both consume and produce energy. Such a rapid and deep transition will have profound implications for the framing of contemporary society and is far removed from the rhetoric of green growth that increasingly dominates the climate change agenda.

Warming ocean temperatures a third of a mile below the surface, in a dark ocean in areas with little marine life, might attract scant attention. But this is precisely the depth where frozen pockets of methane ‘ice’ transition from a dormant solid to a powerful greenhouse gas.

New University of Washington research suggests that subsurface warming could be causing more methane gas to bubble up off the Washington and Oregon coast.

The study, to appear in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, shows that of 168 bubble plumes observed within the past decade, a disproportionate number were seen at a critical depth for the stability of methane hydrates.

“We see an unusually high number of bubble plumes at the depth where methane hydrate would decompose if seawater has warmed,” said lead author H. Paul Johnson, a UW professor of oceanography. “So it is not likely to be just emitted from the sediments; this appears to be coming from the decomposition of methane that has been frozen for thousands of years.”

Methane has contributed to sudden swings in Earth’s climate in the past. It is unknown what role it might contribute to contemporary climate change, although recent studies have reported warming-related methane emissions in Arctic permafrost and off the Atlantic coast.

Of the 168 methane plumes in the new study, some 14 were located at the transition depth – more plumes per unit area than on surrounding parts of the Washington and Oregon seafloor.

If methane bubbles rise all the way to the surface, they enter the atmosphere and act as a powerful greenhouse gas. But most of the deep-sea methane seems to get consumed during the journey up. Marine microbes convert the methane into carbon dioxide, producing lower-oxygen, more-acidic conditions in the deeper offshore water, which eventually wells up along the coast and surges into coastal waterways.

“Current environmental changes in Washington and Oregon are already impacting local biology and fisheries, and these changes would be amplified by the further release of methane,” Johnson said.

Another potential consequence, he said, is the destabilization of seafloor slopes where frozen methane acts as the glue that holds the steep sediment slopes in place. [more]

I am posting Anderson’s last paragraph as an antiseptic & antidote to B9K9’s narcissistic “go with the flow” mantra.

“Explicit and quantitative carbon budgets provide a firm foundation on which policy makers and civil society can build a genuinely low-carbon society. But the job of scientists remains pivotal. It is incumbent on our community to be vigilant in guiding the policy process within the climate goals established by civil society; to draw attention to inconsistencies, misunderstandings and deliberate abuse of the scientific research. It is not our job to be politically expedient with our analysis or to curry favour with our funders. Whether our conclusions are liked or not is irrelevant. As we massage the assumptions of our analysis to fit within today’s political and economic hegemony, so we do society a grave disservice – one for which the repercussions will be irreversible.”

In a mercenary culture where everything is for sale, some hard nosed struggling truth seekers take vehement exception.

A quick look at the implications of Kevin Anderson’s carbon reduction requirement reveals the size of the miracle that Bill Gates intuits that we need (and thinks we can create!) in his recent interview We Need an Energy Miracle.

If we assume the world were to follow Anderson’s path and also include some “realistically generous” assumptions about the growth of existing low-carbon electricity sources and a world GDP growth not exceeding 1.5% pa, by 2040 the world would experience a 40-50% shortfall in our end-use (not primary) energy.

To me this implies one of three end-states:

1. The world population becomes 50% poorer than today, on average;
2. We decline to impoverish ourselves, blow right through +2C, and plow on to The End; or
3. Bill Gates’ miracle occurs.

The requisite miracle would need to consist of three sub-miracles:

1. A technical miracle to double our expected low-carbon electricity production in 26 years;
2. A second technical miracle to shift of all human activities except perhaps for some transportation from thermal to electrical energy; and
3. A political miracle in the form of an enforceable global agreement to cut emissions to meet Anderson’s draconian schedule.

This is yet another illustration of the collision of magical thinking and dispassionate realism.

While I commend those who are looking under every rock for some kind of answer, each day brings new confirmation that we simply can’t climb back down Mount Carbon in one piece.

What everyone hoped was just a headache is turning out to be a planet-sized Grade 4 glioblastoma. It’s time to get our affairs in order.

I feel your frustration wrt local political chicanery. My late wife and I lived in a development 30 miles outside of San Diego that had a golf course. The owners living on “the golf course side” were motivated to get others of their tribe elected to positions on the governing board. They would make decisions that affected everybody’s HOA fees, but would only really benefit users of the golf course. From time to time the non-golfers would organize against a particularly horrible or expensive decision and bring a lawsuit against the board. While we lived there I think there were at least 3 lawsuits that were decided against the governing board and in favor of the non-golfers. Soon before we moved to Costa Rica a judge presiding over the then-current case before him noted in court that as far as he knew the board had never been on the winning end of a lawsuit. He chided the board as people/persons collectively and suggested that in light of their track record in municipal court, they might seriously consider changing to a different law firm for representation or else changing their behavior. Not sure if their unblemished-by-a-win track record is still 0 for N >> 4, but it was a good feeling to hear these former high-school-student-government types being taken to the virtual woodshed. May you have the same good feeling one of these days in your neighborhood. Hunter Thompson had a good name for them in Colorado…greedheads.

LWA is right, this is a fool’s errand, but what else have I got to do?

Considering the odds against you due to the opposition playing with either a stacked or un-full deck (you said one was either a liar or schizo), I’d look to other pursuits for the time we have left, which is not determinable with any precision (2 weeks to 2 decades is not very many significant digits, no?).
Maybe knitting, gardening, sky diving (no plane required in Yosemite or Scandinavia…just a cliff and your trusty chute or wing-suit), home brewing beer, target shooting with a rifle or bow & arrow [Zen & all that], and the beat goes on. Or go with Artleads do-easy approach and oppose them without planning on winning and watch the process as a sort of depraved theater.
Late addition…maybe learn to fly a radio-controlled drone. Fly it outside the windows of the adversary’s legal team…make ’em go to da mens room and talk when the water’s running like the mobsters they probably are.

Not having read the fine print of the Patriot Act, I’ll leave it at that.
But I wish you the best, or at least that’s what Gene says to tell you.
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Rusty,

I only played hockey for a year in high school when my dad was stationed in Goose Bay, Labrador. Jargon may have changed, but I’m pretty sure we are in the ‘blade’ part of the graph…the blade being the section that contacts the puck…unless you’re the goalie, in which case you contact the puck with any part of the stick you can put in front of it. But that Cenk is good on many other things, eh?
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Artleads,
Your approach sounds like a sensible one to avoid getting bogged down with expecting or hoping for a victory.
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Norman Pagett,
Exactly, which prompts the question of whether you used to (or still) work for the RNC or are a level higher up on the financial food chain and work for one of the organizations that invests money in both the RNC and the DNC.
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Ray Batman,
If you’re interested, there’s a thread one older than this one where there has been a lot of discussion about free will or absence thereof. I’m pretty much done with it, but you’re welcome to jump in over there if your influences toward exploration or proselytization are truly inexorable.
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Tom (or anyone),

Is the word ‘frozen’ when referring to methane hydrates used to denote their being locked into the lattices and thereby incapable of moving outside their ‘cage’ or is the pressure at around 1700 feet high enough to actually freeze the gas even though the surrounding water is still liquid? or both ?
Decades ago I could read a physical chemistry PVT chart, but these days I wouldn’t know how to find one without a trial & error session in the Google search box.

Thanks to anyone in advance for an answer

Thanks to all of yuz for everything here up til now, except maybe…
nah, just thanks to everybody here, really.

Rita- Interesting stuff about the climate science community… if they only knew that in the end, they will be blamed for “not warning us.” They will be blamed for “getting it wrong” because they were too scared to tell the truth. It won’t matter that people like Guy have been saying it, for his words will be trampled under the weight of the pitchfork-carrying masses. Unless, of course, they go after the liberals and the gays and the abortionists and the Muslims instead. It is just as likely that those groups will be blamed for incurring the “wrath of God.” Ugh, humanity…

‘A more tranquil weather pattern emerged this week, with light to moderate precipitation falling on the Pacific Northwest, southern High Plains and Rio Grande Valley, western Tennessee Valley, southern Appalachians, and South Carolina, and most of New England. Heavier totals (more than 2 inches) were limited to extreme western Washington, parts of the Rio Grande Valley and southern High Plains, central South Carolina, and along the southeastern Alaskan coast. Elsewhere in the lower 48 States, mostly dry and warm weather was observed, with temperatures averaging more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal across the Far West and the northern halves of the Rockies and Plains. The first 12 days of October have seen little or no rain from eastern Texas to Mississippi and northward from the eastern Dakotas into southern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Unfortunately, this dry pattern has persisted for at least 3 consecutive months in the southern Great Plains and Delta, leading to severe to extreme short-term drought. While a limited period of dry and warm conditions is ideal for the maturation, dry down, and harvesting of summer crops, too much time under such conditions degrades topsoil moisture, pasture conditions, and winter grains growth while creating ideal wild fire conditions.’

Sabine, I keep hoping Shakasta comes out on CDs. I check regularly, but as of now none of Lessings books are recorded. For me, her writing isn’t easy to follow. I find listening easier with many books. Shakasta was definitely not a run of the mill read. To come across something so different and profound is a rare treat.

Lidia, thanks for the note. And, no, I don’t think the red fox was zapped by a monolith, nor any of the predators, for that matter. Except possibly, humans…I think the monoliths in the movie and the book are symbols of the way human institutions or organizations with a powerful voice are able to influence the masses for evil. Take the church, it emitted, through its embrace of violence and greed, a foul brew, a garbled message so disturbing and without real comfort, that millions of minds were hopelessly warped.

Just give thanks to, whatever or to yourself, that you and Sabine and many here, live outside most of the effects of the shrieking monoliths. What makes us few so freakin’ different? Any ideas?

Thanks infanttyrone, funny you mentioned Zen archery because I just signed up for a workshop on that next weekend. Knitting, gardening, just butchered 1/2 a pig and put up some Italian-style charcuterie.. life goes on until it doesn’t. I’m not allowing this development thing to overwhelm me, although it is frustrating. It just seemed to fit in with Guy’s frustrations above, about “choices”.

Going out to enjoy a musician who tries to live a life of excellence.
Tomorrow and Sunday too.
Three different ones in a row.

But this just needs to be seen to be believed.

Just picked the top one from Google after typing Huckabee & slavery.
Because I’m in a hurry…read ’em and weep!
Gene tells me this fellow is applying for sub-human citizenship.
Maybe Gerald knows a Kevorkian type MD with a friendly bedside manner who can put him out of *our* misery.
Don’t worry about wrongful death lawsuits or arrests.
We have folks here who will ‘understand’ the Doc’s need to do it.
And refuse to vote to convict…sorry if that sounds personal, anyone.
There are more of y’all than just the ones out front.
Just suggesting an ad hoc temporary adoption of H&G values.
Worth a try…we’re going to be adopting them pretty soon anyway.
So, get there first, ahead of the inevitable competition.

Mark: Hey, mail away! i didn’t see your post – just send it to my e-mail that Guy can supply for you, if you ask nicely. If it’s actual documents – i believe he also has my home address (and if not i’ll supply it for him). If you’re being watched by the NSA, i don’t need to see them that badly and will take your word for it.

“In essence, while intelligent, high achieving students like Guy were directed towards academia, more cunning groups understood that their wards should pursue careers in finance & politics. And while earnest, fair minded people like Daniel & Guy were being inculcated with false ideas of egalitarianism, their PTB peers were already being versed in the arts of deception, rule & order.”

Though in many ways you represent my past arch nemesis, and I suspect much of your wisdom is but in hindsight, I must concede that you are correct on a number of things.

I’m naturally inclined to attack you on the grounds of your seeming lack of empathy, which is something I now believe can neither be taught nor learned, but is something more akin to a talent. But now standing on the same beach looking out over the same horizon, I honestly haven’t much of a moral imperative to stand on anymore. There isn’t an avenue of radical change I haven’t seriously thought through over the last several decades, but all have proven to be, more or less, as you say “false ideas of egalitarianism”, and I am but a fool to have ever thought otherwise.

You are correct, I am not a cunning man, and not surprisingly, nor am I financially well off. I put all my eggs in imaginary baskets, first it was decades of activism, then it was collapse preparedness which I completely let go of as well in 2009, and have been shooing away the wolves ever since. I am stupidly over read with nothing but a peasant disposition to show for it. But honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing. No amount of money or the false security it provides can compare to having fought the good fight, even if it was always a losing battle, even if it took me too long to realize it.

Though you are correct about the ultimate outcome, your lack of empathy clouds your judgement in my opinion in ways unknown to you, which might explain your “frustration” with those of us who never sought the same advantage.

But where you are terribly wrong, is in thinking I was somehow inculcated, given I was reared in a very conservative religious community and became a radical pariah at thirteen. We anarchist tend to have a rather negative opinion of conservatism and god speak, not to mention wealth accumulation, and that was all I was ever taught.

No, the passion to fight for what one believes to be sacred is definitely far what our society inculcates.

As just one example: Everyone is going to have a different response to an old growth clear cut, especially those who have never seen one up close and personal. Some look at it and see nothing, some see dollar signs, others see it as a regrettable necessity, but very few saw/see it for what it was/is, which is passive suicide. No one taught me that. Nor did anyone teach most of my past egalitarian comrades. One doesn’t read Abby because they were indoctrinated by their culture, in fact, it’s just the opposite.

Those who possess empathy for the meek and defenseless do so not out of personal gain, but for something far more important than ourselves; our personal well-being was rarely ever considered. One doesn’t chain themselves to bulldozers because they’re thinking about their future nest egg. Though you are correct, there is a bevy of ego involved in choosing to live a radical life. It was the same egotism that blinded us no less than those who sought the “arts of deception, rule & order”. We are only human after all, some of us just have different values.

Though in a bygone era, I would have sought to cut your throat as soon as listen to the shite you preach, given there has never been anything other than shite, I suppose you won the game, especially since Guy now bemoans the loss of his six digit salary. Oh well…

Funny thing is, I suspect you and I would enjoy sharing a few waves on the beach. Glad to see you’re still lurking around like the rest of us.

You’re assuming that you have the capacity of identifying TPTB. Contemplate the logistics and PR of 9.11 and then familiarize yourself with Anthony Sutton, and then get back to us on that list of names. And if you really want a mind fuck, look into infanttyrone’s “black deltas”.

@ Sabine

Love your open mindedness, perspective and compassion, it is sorely needed here, otherwise self-righteous misanthropic assholes like myself would run this space to the ground.

@ Kevin

Yes, I was taking license with the term “thermal inertia”. And yes, you are quite correct; it’s difficult to see NTE happening without a sudden increase in temperature at oceans depths. I suspect you are onto something with NTE happening more around mid-century, but then again, I say this as I sit in Oregon with Hawaiian like weather blowing over the 45th parallel in mid-October. El Nino or El Normal? Hmmm……

‘119 of 224 world countries-and a majority of the people of the world-are reproducing at below replacement rates’http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/economy/2015/10/17/immigration-essential-replace-populations-critical-decline/14450004002509

“Humans manage existential terror by embracing cultural worldviews that afford a sense of meaning and value, and hope of immortality. Efforts to transcend death underlie our most noble achievements; however, they also foster our most ignominious proclivities, including: disdain for and hostility toward people with different beliefs; indifference to, or contempt for, the natural environment; and, the mindless pursuit of money and stuff—which, if unchecked, may render we humans the first life-form to prune their own branch from The Tree of Life. Prospects for the future of our species will be considered in light of these ideas.

Sheldon Solomon is Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College. His studies of the effects of the uniquely human awareness of death on behavior have been supported by the National Science Foundation and Ernest Becker Foundation, and were featured in the award winning documentary film Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality. He is co-author of In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror; and The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.”

Daniel,
Just got back from music in a club where the only psychoactive thing I ingested was a coca-cola with a couple tablespoons of milk and then a few hours yakking and yukking it up with a professional comedian friend, where I drank water.

I scrolled through the evening’s posts just to see what I would be paying closer attention to in the morning (which will come more like around noon at this point) and saw your suggestion to Ed that he look into my “black deltas”.

I do not recognize this phrase. If it refers to something I posted about, please help me with finding my post so I can figure out what this is or these are. Perhaps I posted about something and you are coining a new term for it?
The only things that come to mind are things like “black ops” and “delta force”. I know (or have read about, so who knows if the info was correct) a little bit about a few areas of black ops, but I know next to nothing about the delta force other than a few fictional TV shows from roughly 8-10 years ago and a few things I have read on the internet.

Please let me know what this term means, at least according to your understanding of it.

I sure hope (sorry, my Doomishly Correct Thesaurus is unavailable) I haven’t been taken over by some alien entity, like maybe The Gene Genie, or the Ghost in the Machinery. (Bowie’s lawyers, please note the my Gene is not his Jean).

.
.
I plan to get back to compacting these videos, but now the pillow beckons.

infanttyrone: i’m no expert, but after listening to various talks by those who have seen and worked with methane hydrates, i believe the term “frozen” applies to the lattice of crystals (the “cage”) surrounding the gas molecules keeping them intact. Once the surrounding water heats up, or if there is heat from below (which seems to be the case also) these chemical cages melt and the gas is released. The article i linked to above says that the vast majority of this gas stays in the ocean (wreaking havoc there), but that if enough reaches the surface (as it now is doing all over the place) it goes directly into the atmosphere (wreaking as much or more havoc).

I would just like to take this opportunity to wonder that it might be very dangerous to operate your life and your mind oriented towards analogies. That just because something seems to be like something else, that it is not necessarily anything close to that thing it is supposedly similar to…

To whit, the map IS NOT the territory.
Or, more specifically. human society is not the equivalent of a cancer cell. Nor are human beings the equivalent of RNA molecules concerned primarily with dopamine and serotonin fixes. Although it might be extremely comforting and therefore seemingly sensible and “rational” to think so and to say so. The map is not the territory kids. Lay off of it or you’ll probably be running to the shrink for major medication.

Second. I’d say that many people who are making claims about “No” and “Free” and “Will”, probably don’t have much idea what will is, couldn’t define it, wouldn’t recognize it if it walked into a bar and ordered a club soda. And probably don’t know what Freedom is and wouldn’t recognize it if it smacked them across the face like a highly electrified wet fish.

But no. Yes, I think they know what no means.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a Japanese movie a few years back that my brother turned me onto called “Iron Man” or “Tetsuo: The Iron Man”

In this film, the main character is seen shoving rods of metal and steel into his body as some form of super alienation. When he tries to make it with his girlfriend, he realizes he has turned into some kind of hideous monster. Finally he is like this ulta-alienated super-creature crashing down the road in flashes and jerks. Really a profoundly disturbing film, mental off the charts and probably one of the better ones of all time to come out of Japan. Not highly recommended if you are on medication of any kind.

Saying that to say that my readings in mental de-colonization, African and North American history outside the Euorpean paradigm, have lead me to feel like I am literally pulling huge, hideous, rusted and grotesque metal objects out of my body and throwing them on the table. Screws. Engine parts. Dental equipment. Exhaust manifolds. Weapons of every kind. Watching them ooze and glisten there in the sickly yellow light. And thinking in horror: that’s me. That’s actually me.

So rather than duck under the table, all I can manage to figure is that I need to get a damn bigger drill-bit so I can get down to god-knows what larger twisted more ugly metal pieces are still down there. This has been an analogy.

If earth were a basketball, you would be surprised to learn that while oceans cover 70% of earth, in volumetric terms, they would be the size of a ping pong ball. All the fresh water on earth would be the size of a grain of salt with much of that single grain polluted.
People think water comes from a tap, just like in Sao Paulo.

68% of earth’s flowers face near term extinction.

Yet another typhoon threatens the Philippines.

Most people think climate change is about saving the polar bears.

In 10 years, humanity will be fighting for food and water.

If you think 9 billion will stop eating meat and wasting food, then you are fucking delusional. We’ll be lucky we’re not eating humans served with a side of violence.

Luckily I had a philosophy prof in uni who turned me on to Camus early. And specifically The Myth of Sisyphus, which at the time I found mildly entertaining in an absurd kind of way. Later, after reading all of Camus, and most spectacularly the underground anti-fascist newspaper articles in “Between Hell and Reason”, I finally grokked the existentialist line about Action being the only course to meaning and antidote to despair.

That being said, you ~have~ to define yourself. You must do it. You are not controlled and buffeted about by impossibly strong and impenetrable forces. But, as a condition of your being you must choose and you must define your meaning. You have [cheek meet tongue] no choice in the matter. Meaning that if you choose to stand on the beach, shake your fist at the stars and rail that “There is no meaning to anything and nothing is to be done, so why do anything?”….you are still DO-ing something and you are still defining yourself and your meaning whether you want to or not. That is pretty clearly Sartre’s “hell” so to speak of the human condition, and saying or pretending it’s not doesn’t mitigate the pain, suffering and terror of it.

So be a trade union organizer, be a commie red who pounds Hitler’s zombies into dust, go fight with the Naxals, defend an abortion clinic, work with Food Not Bombs, read Andrea Dworkin, publish an underground antifa newspaper, blow up a recruiting station or the Glen Canyon Dam, join the animal liberation front, scream at the top of your lungs, go live in the woods in Montana or on the beach in Cuba, set fire to whatever…but please….for the love of Sisyphus……DO….SOMETHING…..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The name is Wester, buddy, not Webster.
Although I do traffic in definitions.

Sorry about that infanttyrone, I guess I was a little to wink-wink nudge-nudge with that one. The “black deltas” refers to all the absurdly large triangular black UFO’s being seen around the world. Hudson/Phoenix/Belgium just to name a few of the mass sightings over the years.

I think when I went off on you (at you?) some time ago about your reaction to Ruppert’s suicide I might have had something like this in mind. Sometime this Stanhope fellow can be brilliant, even though he insists that he’s not particularly ‘smart’.

– infanttyrone:
‘Correction:
Rusty,
We are in the stick or handle part of the graph, not not not the blade.
Sorry if you lost a bar bet or anything like that…next one’s on me.’

Drinks all round then…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
Make mine a double!
What part of ‘Blade’ don’t you understand? We were in it for most of the twentieth century. There will be no one around to measure the final highest temperatures but you can bet your life, if there were, someone, somewhere would be denying it.

I see what you mean.
It’s basically a question of whether you are oriented to landscape or portrait mode (or if that’s a poor analogy, then ‘just different to the tune of 90 degrees’).

Since I played hockey (poorly for a year in high school), perhaps subconsciously I looked at it and assumed that the horizontal (which I realize is just horizontal by convention) part of the graph was the blade.

If we had a collection of 3-D graphs we could inspect them and note that in some of the graphs one pair of axes is always parallel to the other (the handle) and one axis sometimes shows a curvature in relation to the others (that would be the blade). Unless curved blades have been outlawed, in which case I surrender my antiquated credentials, which were always rather dodgy.

So, when you and Rusty, together or separately, decide on which watering hole(s) should bear the stigmata of two or more doomers raising their glasses and saying “Here’s to ulvfugl!”, just let me know. Then we can figure out a time, if we have time left. I’ll get off cheap with just the one round, of course, because if we shout *that* toast, the staff will probably be paranoid about serving us any more, lest we be secret shoppers for the state’s alcohol bureaucrats. Well, I’m not sure I could say it w/o appearing a more than just a little bit hammered by the hooch.

Labatt or Molson, eh? Or Canadian Club?

Maybe they’ll offer delivery service down here to the beach. Even better…